[Illustration: Ellen Terry
drawn from photographs by Albert Sterner]
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS
BY
ELLEN TERRY
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
MCMIX
_1908, The McClure Company_
1907, 1908, The S.S. McClure Company
1907, 1908, Ellen Terry
TO
EDY
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. A CHILD OF THE STAGE, 1848-56
The Charles Keans, 1856
Training in Shakespeare, 1856-59
II. ON THE ROAD, 1859-61
Life in a Stock Company, 1862-63
1864
III. ROSSETTI, BERNHARDT, IRVING, 1865-67
My First Impressions of Henry Irving
IV. A SIX-YEAR VACATION, 1868-74
V. THE ACTRESS AND THE PLAYWRIGHT, 1874.
Portia, 1875
Tom Taylor and Lavender Sweep
VI. A YEAR WITH THE BANCROFTS
VII. EARLY DAYS AT THE LYCEUM
VIII. WORK AT THE LYCEUM
IX. LYCEUM PRODUCTIONS
X. LYCEUM PRODUCTIONS (_continued_)
XI. AMERICA: THE FIRST OF EIGHT TOURS
What Constitutes Charm
XII. SOME LIKES AND DISLIKES
XIII. THE MACBETH PERIOD
XIV. LAST DAYS AT THE LYCEUM
My Stage Jubilee
Apologia
The Death of Henry Irving
Alfred Gilbert and others
"Beefsteak" Guests at the Lyceum
Bits From My Diary
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Ellen Terry
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Terry
Charles Kean and Ellen Terry in 1856
Ellen Terry in 1856
Ellen Terry at Sixteen
"The Sisters" (Kate and Ellen Terry)
Ellen Terry at Seventeen
George Frederick Watts, R.A.
Ellen Terry as Helen in "The Hunchback"
Henry Irving
Head of a Young Girl (Ellen Terry)
Henry Irving
Ellen Terry as Portia
Henry Irving as Matthias in "The Bells"
Henry Irving as Philip of Spain
Henry Irving as Hamlet
Lily Langtry
William Terriss as Squire Thornhill in "Olivia"
Ellen Terry as Ophelia
Ellen Terry as Beatrice
Sir Henry Irving
Irving as Louis XI
Ellen Terry as Henrietta Maria
Ellen Terry as Camma in "The Cup"
Ellen Terry as Iolanthe
Ellen Terry as Letitia Hardy in "The Belle's Stratagem"
Edwin Thomas Booth
Ellen Terry as Juliet
Two Portraits of Ellen Terry as Beatrice
Ellen Terry's Favourite Photograph as Olivia
Eleanora Duse with Lenbach's Child
Ellen Terry as Margaret in "Faust"
Ellen Terry as Ellaline in "The Amber Heart"
Miss Ellen Terry in 1883
The Bas-relief Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson
Miss Terry and Sir Henry Irving
Sarah Holland, Ellen Terry's Dresser
Miss Rosa Corder
Miss Ellen Terry with her Fox-terriers
Miss Ellen Terry in 1898
Sir Henry Irving
Miss Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth
Sir Henry Irving
Ellen Terry as Lucy Ashton in "Ravenswood"
Henry Irving as Cardinal Wolsey in "Henry VIII."
Ellen Terry as Nance Oldfield
Ellen Terry as Kniertje in "The Good Hope"
Ellen Terry as Imogen
Henry Irving as Becket
Sir Henry Irving
Ellen Terry as Rosamund in "Becket"
Ellen Terry as Guinevere in "King Arthur"
"Olivia"
Miss Terry's Garden at Winchelsea
Ellen Terry as Hermione in "The Winter's Tale"
INTRODUCTION
"When I read the book, the biography famous,
And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life?
And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life?
(As if any man really knew aught of my life!)
Why even I myself, I often think, know little or nothing of my real
life.
Only a few hints--a few diffused faint clues and indirections
I seek ... to trace out here."
WALT WHITMAN.
For years I have contemplated telling this story, and for years I have
put off telling it. While I have delayed, my memory has not improved,
and my recollections of the past are more hazy and fragmentary than when
it first occurred to me that one day I might write them down.
My bad memory would matter less if I had some skill in writing--the
practiced writer can see possibilities in the most ordinary events--or
if I had kept a systematic and conscientious record of my life. But
although I was at one time conscientious and diligent enough in keeping
a diary, I kept it for use at the moment, not for future reference. I
kept it with paste-pot and scissors as much as with a pen. My method was
to cut bits out of the newspapers and stick them into my diary day by
day. Before the end of the year was reached Mr. Letts would have been
ashamed to own his diary. It had become a bursting, groaning dust-bin of
information, for the most part useless. The biggest elastic band made
could hardly encircle its bulk, swelled by photographs, letters,
telegrams, dried flowers--the whole making up a confusion in which every
one but the owner would seek in vain to find some sense or meaning.
About six years ago I moved into a smaller house in London, and I burnt
a great many of my earlier diaries as unmovable rubbish. The few
passages which I shall quote in this book from those which escaped
destruction will prove that my bonfire meant no great loss!
Still, when it was suggested to me in the year of my stage jubilee that
I ought to write down my recollections, I longed for those diaries! I
longed for anything which would remind me of the past and make it live
again for me. I was frightened. Something would be expected of me, since
I could not deny that I had had an eventful life packed full of
incident, and that by the road I had met many distinguished and
interesting men and women. I could not deny that I had been fifty years
on the stage, and that this meant enough material for fifty books, if
only the details of every year could be faithfully told. But it is not
given to all of us to see our lives in relief as we look back. Most of
us, I think, see them in perspective, of which our birth is the
vanishing point. Seeing, too, is only half the battle. How few people
can describe what they see!
While I was thinking in this obstructive fashion and wishing that I
could write about my childhood like Tolstoi, about my girlhood like
Marie Bashkirtseff, and about the rest of my days and my work like many
other artists of the pen, who merely, by putting black upon white, have
had the power to bring before their readers not merely themselves "as
they lived," but the most homely and intimate details of their lives,
the friend who had first impressed on me that I ought not to leave my
story untold any longer, said that the beginning was easy enough: "What
is the first thing you remember? Write that down as a start."
But for my friend's practical suggestion it is doubtful if I should ever
have written a line! He relieved my anxiety about my powers of compiling
a stupendous autobiography, and made me forget that writing was a new
art, to me, and that I was rather old to try my hand at a new art. My
memory suddenly began to seem not so bad after all. For weeks I had
hesitated between Othello's "Nothing extenuate, nor write down aught in
malice," and Pilate's "What is truth?" as my guide and my apology. Now I
saw that both were too big for my modest endeavor. I was not leaving a
human document for the benefit of future psychologists and historians,
but telling as much of my story as I could remember to the good, living
public which has been considerate and faithful to me for so many years.
How often it has made allowances for me when I was nervous on first
nights! With what patience it has waited long and uncomfortable hours to
see me! Surely its charity would quickly cover my literary sins.
I gave up the search for a motto which should express my wish to tell
the truth so far as I know it, to describe things as I see them, to be
faithful according to my light, not dreading the abuse of those who
might see in my light nothing but darkness.
I shut up "Othello" and did not try to verify the remark of "jesting"
Pilate. The only instruction that I gave myself was to "begin at the
beginning."
E.T.
THE STORY OF MY LIFE
I
A CHILD OF THE STAGE
1848-1856
This is the first thing I remember.
In the corner of a lean-to whitewashed attic stood a fine, plain, solid
oak bureau. By climbing up on to this bureau I could see from the window
the glories of the sunset. My attic was on a hill in a large and busy
town, and the smoke of a thousand chimneys hung like a gray veil between
me and the fires in the sky. When the sun had set, and the scarlet and
gold, violet and primrose, and all those magic colors that have no
names, had faded into the dark, there were other fires for me to see.
The flaming forges came out, and terrified while they fascinated my
childish imagination.
What did it matter to me that I was locked in and that my father and
mother, with my elder sister Kate, were all at the theater? I had the
sunset, the forges, and the oak bureau.
I cannot say how old I was at this time, but I am sure that it wasn't
long after my birth (which I can't remember, although I have often been
asked to decide in which house at Coventry I was born!). At any rate, I
had not then seen a theater, and I took to the stage before many years
had passed over my head.
Putting together what I remembered, and such authentic history as there
is of my parents' movements, I gather that this attic was in theatrical
lodgings in Glasgow. My father was an actor, my mother an actress, and
they were at this time on tour in Scotland. Perhaps this is the place to
say that father was the son of an Irish builder, and that he eloped in a
chaise with mother, who was the daughter of a Scottish minister. I am
afraid I know no details of their romance. As for my less immediate
ancestry, it is "wropt in mystery." Were we all people of the stage?
There was a Daniel Terry who was not only a famous actor in his day, but
a friend of Sir Walter Scott's. There was an Eliza Terry, an actress
whose portrait appears in _The Dramatic Mirror_ in 1847. But so far as I
know I cannot claim kinship with either Eliza or Daniel.
I have a very dim recollection of anything that happened in the attic,
beyond the fact that when my father and mother went to the theater every
night, they used to put me to bed and that directly their backs were
turned and the door locked, I used to jump up and go to the window. My
"bed" consisted of the mattress pulled off their bed and laid on the
floor--on father's side. Both my father and my mother were very kind and
devoted parents (though severe at times, as all good parents are), but
while mother loved all her children too well to make favorites, I was, I
believe, my father's particular pet. I used to sleep all night holding
his hand.
One night I remember waking up to find a beautiful face bending over me.
Father was holding a candle so that the visitor might see me better, and
gradually I realized that the face belonged to some one in a brown silk
dress--the first silk dress that I had ever seen. This being from
another world had brown eyes and brown hair, which looked to me very
dark, because we were a white lot, very fair indeed. I shall never
forget that beautiful vision of this well-dressed woman with her lovely
complexion and her gold chain round her neck. It was my Aunt Lizzie.
I hold very strongly that a child's earliest impressions mould its
character perhaps more than either heredity or education. I am sure it
is true in my case. What first impressed me? An attic, an oak bureau, a
lovely face, a bed on the floor. Things have come and gone in my life
since then, but they have been powerless to efface those early
impressions. I adore pretty faces. I can't keep away from shops where
they sell good old furniture like my bureau. I like plain rooms with low
ceilings better than any other rooms; and for my afternoon siesta, which
is one of my institutions, I often choose the floor in preference to bed
or sofa.
What we remember in our childhood and what we are told afterwards often
become inextricably confused in our minds, and after the bureau and Aunt
Lizzie, my memory is a blank for some years. I can't even tell you when
it was first decided that I was to go on the stage, but I expect it was
when I was born, for in those days theatrical folk did not imagine that
their children _could_ do anything but follow their parents' profession.
I must depend now on hearsay for certain facts. The first fact is my
birth, which should, perhaps, have been mentioned before anything else.
To speak by the certificate, I was born on the 27th of February, 1848,
at Coventry. Many years afterwards, when people were kind enough to
think that the house in which I was born deserved to be discovered,
there was a dispute as to which house in Market Street could claim me.
The dispute was left unsettled in rather a curious way. On one side of
the narrow street a haberdasher's shop bore the inscription, "Birthplace
of Ellen Terry." On the other, an eating-house declared itself to be
"the original birthplace"! I have never been able to arbitrate in the
matter, my statement that my mother had always said that the house was
"on the right-hand side, coming from the market-place," being apparently
of no use. I have heard lately that one of the birthplaces has retired
from the competition, and that the haberdasher has the field to himself.
I am glad, for the sake of those friends of mine who have bought his
handkerchiefs and ties as souvenirs. There is, however, nothing very
attractive about the house itself. It is better built than a house of
the same size would be built now, and it has a certain old-fashioned
respectability, but that is the end of its praises. Coventry itself
makes up for the deficiency. It is a delightful town, and it was a happy
chance that made me a native of Warwickshire, Shakespeare's own county.
Sarah Kemble married Mr. Siddons at Coventry too--another happy omen.
I have acted twice in my native town in old days, but never in recent
years. In 1904 I planned to act there again, but unfortunately I was
taken ill at Cambridge, and the doctors would not allow me to go to
Coventry. The morning my company left Cambridge without me, I was very
miserable. It is always hateful to disappoint the public, and on this
occasion I was compelled to break faith where I most wished to keep it.
I heard afterwards from my daughter (who played some of my parts
instead of me) that many of the Coventry people thought I had never
meant to come at all. If this should meet their eyes, I hope they will
believe that this was not so. My ambition to play at Coventry again
shall be realized yet.[1]
[Footnote 1: Since I wrote this, I have again visited my native
town--this time to receive its civic congratulations on the occasion of
my jubilee, and as recently as March of the present year I acted at the
new Empire Theater.]
At one time nothing seemed more unlikely than that I should be able to
act in another Warwickshire town, a town whose name is known all over
the world. But time and chance and my own great wish succeeded in
bringing about my appearance at Stratford-on-Avon.
I can well imagine that the children of some strolling players used to
have a hard time of it, but my mother was not one to shirk her duties.
She worked hard at her profession and yet found it possible not to
_drag_ up her children, to live or die as it happened, but to bring them
up to be healthy, happy, and wise--theater-wise, at any rate. When her
babies were too small to be left at the lodgings (which she and my
father took in each town they visited as near to the theater as
possible), she would bundle us up in a shawl and put us to sleep in her
dressing-room. So it was, that long before I spoke in a theater, I slept
in one.
Later on, when we were older and mother could leave us at home, there
was a fire one night at our lodgings, and she rushed out of the theater
and up the street in an agony of terror. She got us out of the house all
right, took us to the theater, and went on with the next act as if
nothing had happened. Such fortitude is commoner in our profession, I
think, than in any other. We "go on with the next act" whatever
happens, and if we know our business, no one in the audience will ever
guess that anything is wrong--that since the curtain last went down some
dear friend has died, or our children in the theatrical lodgings up the
street have run the risk of being burnt to death.
My mother had eleven children altogether, but only nine survived their
infancy, and of these nine, my eldest brother, Ben, and my sister
Florence have since died. My sister Kate, who left the stage at an age
when most of the young women of the present day take to it for the first
time, and made an enduring reputation in a few brilliant years, was the
eldest of the family. Then came a sister, who died, and I was the third.
After us came Ben, George, Marion, Flossie, Charles, Tom, and Fred. Six
out of the nine have been on the stage, but only Marion, Fred, and I are
there still.
Two or three members of this large family, at the most, were in
existence when I first entered a theater in a professional capacity, so
I will leave them all alone for the present. I had better confess at
once that I don't remember this great event, and my sister Kate is
unkind enough to say that it never happened--to me! The story, she
asserts, was told of her. But without damning proofs she is not going to
make me believe it! Shall I be robbed of the only experience of my first
eight years of life? Never!
During the rehearsals of a pantomime in a Scottish town (Glasgow, I
think. Glasgow has always been an eventful place to me!), a child was
wanted for the Spirit of the Mustard-pot. What more natural than that my
father should offer my services? I had a shock of pale yellow hair, I
was small enough to be put into the property mustard-pot, and the
Glasgow stage manager would easily assume that I had inherited talent.
My father had acted with Macready in the stock seasons both at Edinburgh
and Glasgow, and bore a very high reputation with Scottish audiences.
But the stage manager and father alike reckoned without their actress!
When they tried to put me into the mustard-pot, I yelled lustily and
showed more lung-power than aptitude for the stage.
"Pit your child into the mustard-pot, Mr. Terry," said the stage
manager.
"D--n you and your mustard-pot, sir!" said my mortified father. "I won't
frighten my child for you or anyone else!"
But all the same he was bitterly disappointed at my first dramatic
failure, and when we reached home he put me in the corner to chasten me.
"_You'll_ never make an actress!" he said, shaking a reproachful finger
at me.
It is _my_ mustard-pot, and why Kate should want it, I can't think! She
hadn't yellow hair, and she couldn't possibly have behaved so badly. I
have often heard my parents say significantly that they had no trouble
with _Kate_! Before she was four, she was dancing a hornpipe in a
sailor's jumper, a rakish little hat, and a diminutive pair of white
ducks! Those ducks, marked "Kate Terry," were kept by mother for years
as a precious relic, and are, I hope, still in the family archives!
I stick to the mustard-pot, but I entirely disclaim the little Duke of
York in Richard III., which some one with a good memory stoutly insists
he saw me play before I made my first appearance as Mamilius. Except
for this abortive attempt at Glasgow, I was never on any stage even for
a rehearsal until 1856, at the Princess's Theater, when I appeared with
Charles Kean in "A Winter's Tale."
The man with the memory may have seen Kate as one of the Princes in the
Tower, but he never saw me with her. Kate was called up to London in
1852 to play Prince Arthur in Charles Kean's production of "King John,"
and after that she acted in all his plays, until he gave up management
in 1859. She had played Arthur during a stock season at Edinburgh, and
so well that some one sang her praises to Kean and advised him to engage
her. My mother took Kate to London, and I was left with my father in the
provinces for two years. I can't recall much about those two years
except sunsets and a great mass of shipping looming up against the sky.
The sunsets followed me about everywhere; the shipping was in Liverpool,
where father was engaged for a considerable time. He never ceased
teaching me to be useful, alert, and quick. Sometimes he hastened my
perceptive powers with a slipper, and always he corrected me if I
pronounced any word in a slipshod fashion. He himself was a beautiful
elocutionist, and if I now speak my language well it is in no small
degree due to my early training.
It was to his elocution that father owed his engagement with Macready,
of whom he always spoke in terms of the most affectionate admiration in
after years, and probably it did him a good turn again with Charles
Kean. An actor who had supported Macready with credit was just the actor
likely to be useful to a manager who was producing a series of plays by
Shakespeare. Kate had been a success at the Princess's, too, in child
parts, and this may have reminded Mr. Kean to send for Kate's father! At
any rate he was sent for towards the end of the year 1853 and left
Liverpool for London. I know I cooked his breakfasts for him in
Liverpool, but I haven't the slightest recollection of the next two
years in London. As I am determined not to fill up the early blanks with
stories of my own invention, I must go straight on to 1856, when
rehearsals were called at the Princess's Theater for Shakespeare's
"Winter's Tale."
THE CHARLES KEANS
1856
The Charles Keans from whom I received my first engagement, were both
remarkable people, and at the Princess Theater were doing very
remarkable work. Kean the younger had not the fire and genius of his
wonderful father, Edmund, and but for the inherited splendor of his name
it is not likely that he would ever have attained great eminence as an
actor. His Wolsey and his Richard (the Second, not the Third) were his
best parts, perhaps because in them his beautiful diction had full scope
and his limitations were not noticeable. But it is more as a stage
reformer than as an actor that he will be remembered. The old
happy-go-lucky way of staging plays, with its sublime indifference to
correctness of detail and its utter disregard of archaeology, had
received its first blow from Kemble and Macready, but Charles Kean gave
it much harder knocks and went further than either of them in the good
work.
It is an old story and a true one that when Edmund Kean made his first
great success as Shylock, after a long and miserable struggle as a
strolling player, he came home to his wife and said: "You shall ride in
your carriage," and then, catching up his little son, added, "and
Charley shall go to Eton!" Well, Charley did go to Eton, and if Eton did
not make him a great actor, it opened his eyes to the absurd
anachronisms in costumes and accessories which prevailed on the stage at
that period, and when he undertook the management of the Princess's
Theater, he turned his classical education to account. In addition to
scholarly knowledge, he had a naturally refined taste and the power of
selecting the right man to help him. PlanchŽ, the great authority on
historical costumes, was one of his ablest coadjutors, and Mr. Bradshaw
designed all the properties. It has been said lately that I began my
career on an unfurnished stage, when the play was the thing, and
spectacle was considered of small importance. I take this opportunity of
contradicting that statement most emphatically. Neither when I began nor
yet later in my career have I ever played under a management where
infinite pains were not given to every detail. I think that far from
hampering the acting, a beautiful and congruous background and
harmonious costumes, representing accurately the spirit of the time in
which the play is supposed to move, ought to help and inspire the actor.
Such thoughts as these did not trouble my head when I acted with the
Keans, but, child as I was, the beauty of the productions at the
Princess's Theater made a great impression on me, and my memory of them
is quite clear enough, even if there were not plenty of other evidence,
for me to assert that in some respects they were even more elaborate
than those of the present day. I know that the bath-buns of one's
childhood always seem in memory much bigger and better than the buns
sold nowadays, but even allowing for the natural glamor which the years
throw over buns and rooms, places and plays alike, I am quite certain
that Charles Kean's productions of Shakespeare would astonish the modern
critic who regards the period of my first appearance as a sort of
dark-age in the scenic art of the theater.
I have alluded to the beauty of Charles Kean's diction. His voice was
also of a wonderful quality--soft and low, yet distinct and clear as a
bell. When he played Richard II. the magical charm of this organ was
alone enough to keep the house spellbound. His vivid personality made a
strong impression on me. Yet others only remember that he called his
wife "Delly," though she was Nelly, and always spoke as if he had a cold
in his head. How strange! If I did not understand what suggested
impressions so different from my own, they would make me more indignant.
"Now who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive.
Ten who in ears and eyes
Match me; they all surmise,
They this thing, and I that:
Whom shall my soul believe?"
What he owed to Mrs. Kean, he would have been the first to confess. In
many ways she was the leading spirit in the theater; at the least, a
joint ruler, not a queen-consort. During the rehearsals Mr. Kean used
to sit in the stalls with a loud-voiced dinner-bell by his side, and
when anything went wrong on the stage, he would ring it ferociously, and
everything would come to a stop, until Mrs. Kean, who always sat on the
stage, had set right what was wrong. She was more formidable than
beautiful to look at, but her wonderful fire and genius were none the
less impressive because she wore a white handkerchief round her head and
had a very beaky nose! How I admired and loved and feared her! Later on
the fear was replaced by gratitude, for no woman ever gave herself more
trouble to train a young actress than did Mrs. Kean. The love and
admiration, I am glad to say, remained and grew. It is rare that it
falls to the lot of anyone to have such an accomplished teacher. Her
patience and industry were splendid.
It was Mrs. Kean who chose me out of five or six other children to play
my first part. We were all tried in it, and when we had finished, she
said the same thing to us all: "That's very nice! Thank you, my dear.
That will do."
We none of us knew at the time which of us had pleased her most.
At this time we were living in the upper part of a house in the Gower
Street region. That first home in London I remember chiefly by its fine
brass knocker, which mother kept beautifully bright, and by its being
the place to which I was sent my first part! Bound in green American
cloth, it looked to me more marvelous than the most priceless book has
ever looked since! I was so proud and pleased and delighted that I
danced a hornpipe for joy!
Why was I chosen, and not one of the other children, for the part of
Mamilius? some one may ask. It was not mere luck, I think. Perhaps I was
a born actress, but that would have served me little if I had not been
able to _speak_! It must be remembered that both my sister Kate and I
had been trained almost from our birth for the stage, and particularly
in the important branch of clear articulation. Father, as I have already
said, was a very charming elocutionist, and my mother read Shakespeare
beautifully. They were both very fond of us and saw our faults with eyes
of love, though they were unsparing in their corrections. In these early
days they had need of all their patience, for I was a most troublesome,
wayward pupil. However, "the labor we delight in physics pain," and I
hope, too, that my more staid sister made it up to them!
The rehearsals for "A Winter's Tale" were a lesson in fortitude. They
taught me once and for all that an actress's life (even when the actress
is only eight) is not all beer and skittles, or cakes and ale, or fame
and glory. I was cast for the part of Mamilius in the way I have
described, and my heart swelled with pride when I was told what I had to
do, when I realized that I had a real Shakespeare part--a possession
that father had taught me to consider the pride of life!
But many weary hours were to pass before the first night. If a company
has to rehearse four hours a day now, it is considered a great hardship,
and players must lunch and dine like other folk. But this was not Kean's
way! Rehearsals lasted all day, Sundays included, and when there was no
play running at night, until four or five the next morning! I don't
think any actor in those days dreamed of luncheon. (Tennyson, by the
way, told me to say "luncheon"--not "lunch.") How my poor little legs
used to ache! Sometimes I could hardly keep my eyes open when I was on
the stage, and often when my scene was over, I used to creep into the
greenroom and forget my troubles and my art (if you can talk of art in
connection with a child of eight) in a delicious sleep.
At the dress-rehearsals I did not want to sleep. All the members of the
company were allowed to sit and watch the scenes in which they were not
concerned, from the back of the dress-circle. This, by the way, is an
excellent plan, and in theaters where it is followed the young actress
has reason to be grateful. In these days of greater publicity when the
press attend rehearsals, there may be strong reasons against the company
being "in front," but the perfect loyalty of all concerned would dispose
of these reasons. Now, for the first time, the beginner is able to see
the effect of the weeks of thought and labor which have been given to
the production. She can watch from the front the fulfillment of what she
has only seen as intention and promise during the other rehearsals. But
I am afraid that beginners now are not so keen as they used to be. The
first wicked thing I did in a theater sprang from excess of keenness. I
borrowed a knife from a carpenter and made a slit in the canvas to watch
Mrs. Kean as Hermione!
Devoted to her art, conscientious to a degree in mastering the spirit
and details of her part, Mrs. Kean also possessed the personality and
force to chain the attention and indelibly imprint her rendering of a
part on the imagination. When I think of the costume in which she
played Hermione, it seems marvelous to me that she could have produced
the impression that she did. This seems to contradict what I have said
about the magnificence of the production. But not at all! The designs of
the dresses were purely classic; but then, as now, actors and actresses
seemed unable to keep their own period and their own individuality out
of the clothes directly they got them on their backs. In some cases the
original design was quite swamped. No matter what the character that
Mrs. Kean was assuming, she always used to wear her hair drawn flat over
her forehead and twisted tight round her ears in a kind of circular
sweep--such as the old writing-masters used to make when they attempted
an extra grand flourish. And then the amount of petticoats she wore!
Even as Hermione she was always bunched out by layer upon layer of
petticoats, in defiance of the fact that classical parts should not be
dressed in a superfluity of raiment. But if the petticoats were full of
starch, the voice was full of pathos--and the dignity, simplicity, and
womanliness of Mrs. Charles Kean's Hermione could not have been marred
by a far more grotesque costume.
There is something, I suppose, in a woman's nature which always makes
her remember how she was dressed at any specially eventful moment of her
life, and I can see myself, as though it were yesterday, in the little
red-and-silver dress I wore as Mamilius. Mrs. Grieve, the
dresser--"Peter Grieve-us," as we children called her--had pulled me
into my very pink tights (they were by no means _tight_ but very baggy,
according to the pictures of me), and my mother had arranged my hair in
sausage curls on each side of my head in even more perfect order and
regularity than usual. Besides my clothes, I had a beautiful "property"
to be proud of. This was a go-cart, which had been made in the theater
by Mr. Bradshaw, and was an exact copy of a child's toy as depicted on a
Greek vase. It was my duty to drag this little cart about the stage, and
on the first night, when Mr. Kean as Leontes told me to "go play," I
obeyed his instructions with such vigor that I tripped over the handle
and came down on my back! A titter ran through the house, and I felt
that my career as an actress was ruined forever. Even now I remember how
bitterly I wept, and how deeply humiliated I felt. But the little
incident, so mortifying to me, did not spoil my first appearance
altogether. _The Times_ of May 1, 1856, was kind enough to call me
"vivacious and precocious," and "a worthy relative of my sister Kate,"
and my parents were pleased (although they would not show it too much),
and Mrs. Kean gave me a pat on the back. Father and Kate were both in
the cast, too, I ought to have said, and the Queen, Prince Albert, and
the Princess Royal were all in a box on the first night.
To act for the first time in Shakespeare, in a theater where my sister
had already done something for our name, and before royalty, was surely
a good beginning.
From April 28, 1856, I played Mamilius every night for one hundred and
two nights. I was never ill, and my understudy, Clara Denvil, a very
handsome, dark child with flaming eyes, though quite ready and longing
to play my part, never had the chance.
I had now taken the first step, but I had taken it without any notion of
what I was doing. I was innocent of all art, and while I loved the
actual doing of my part, I hated the labor that led up to it. But the
time was soon to come when I was to be fired by a passion for work.
Meanwhile I was unconsciously learning a number of lessons which were to
be most useful to me in my subsequent career.
TRAINING IN SHAKESPEARE
1856-1859
From April 1856 until 1859 I acted constantly at the Princess's Theater
with the Keans, spending the summer holidays in acting at Ryde. My whole
life was the theater, and naturally all my early memories are connected
with it. At breakfast father would begin the day's "coaching." Often I
had to lay down my fork and say my lines. He would conduct these extra
rehearsals anywhere--in the street, the 'bus--we were never safe! I
remember vividly going into a chemist's shop and being stood upon a
stool to say my part to the chemist! Such leisure as I had from my
profession was spent in "minding" the younger children--an occupation in
which I delighted. They all had very pretty hair, and I used to wash it
and comb it out until it looked as fine and bright as floss silk.
It is argued now that stage life is bad for a young child, and children
are not allowed by law to go on the stage until they are ten years
old--quite a mature age in my young days! I cannot discuss the whole
question here, and must content myself with saying that during my three
years at the Princess's I was a very strong, happy, and healthy child. I
was never out of the bill except during the run of "A Midsummer Night's
Dream," when, through an unfortunate accident, I broke my toe. I was
playing Puck, my second part on any stage, and had come up through a
trap at the end of the last act to give the final speech. My sister Kate
was playing Titania that night as understudy to Carlotta Leclercq. Up I
came--but not quite up, for the man shut the trapdoor too soon and
caught my toe. I screamed. Kate rushed to me and banged her foot on the
stage, but the man only closed the trap tighter, mistaking the signal.
"Oh, Katie! Katie!" I cried. "Oh, Nelly! Nelly!" said poor Kate
helplessly. Then Mrs. Kean came rushing on and made them open the trap
and release my poor foot.
"Finish the play, dear," she whispered excitedly, "and I'll double your
salary!" There was Kate holding me up on one side and Mrs. Kean on the
other. Well, I did finish the play in a fashion. The text ran something
like this--
"If we shadows have offended (Oh, Katie, Katie!)
Think but this, and all is mended, (Oh, my toe!)
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear. (I can't, I can't!)
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream, (Oh, dear! oh, dear!)
Gentles, do not reprehend; (A big sob)
If you pardon, we will mend. (Oh, Mrs. Kean!)"
How I got through it, I don't know! But my salary was doubled--it had
been fifteen shillings, and it was raised to thirty--and Mr. Skey,
President of Bartholomew's Hospital, who chanced to be in a stall that
very evening, came round behind the scenes and put my toe right. He
remained my friend for life.
I was not chosen for Puck because I had played Mamilius with some
credit. The same examination was gone through, and again I came out
first. During the rehearsals Mrs. Kean taught me to draw my breath in
through my nose and begin a laugh--a very valuable accomplishment! She
was also indefatigable in her lessons in clear enunciation, and I can
hear her now lecturing the ladies of the company on their vowels. "A, E,
I, O, U, my dear," she used to say, "are five distinct vowels, so don't
mix them all up together, as if you were making a pudding. If you want
to say, 'I am going on the river,' say it plainly and don't tell us you
are going on the 'riv_ah_!' You must say _her_, not _har_; it's _God_,
not _Gud_: rem_on_strance, not rem_un_strance," and so forth. No one
ever had a sharper tongue or a kinder heart than Mrs. Kean. Beginning
with her, I have always loved women with a somewhat hard manner! I have
never believed in their hardness, and have proved them tender and
generous in the extreme.
Actor-managers are very proud of their long runs nowadays, but in
Shakespeare, at any rate, they do not often eclipse Charles Kean's two
hundred and fifty nights of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the
Princess's. It was certainly a very fascinating production, and many of
the effects were beautiful. I, by the way, had my share in marring one
of these during the run. When Puck was told to put a girdle round the
earth in forty minutes, I had to fly off the stage as swiftly as I
could, and a dummy Puck was whirled through the air from the point where
I disappeared. One night the dummy, while in full flying action, fell on
the stage, whereupon, in great concern for its safety, I ran on, picked
it up in my arms, and ran off with it amid roars of laughter! Neither of
the Keans was acting in this production, but there was some one in
authority to give me a sound cuff. Yet I had such excellent intentions.
'Tis ever thus!
I reveled in Puck and his impish pranks, and unconsciously realized that
it was a part in which the imagination could run riot. I believe I
played it well, but I did not _look_ well, and I must contradict
emphatically the kind assumption that I must have been a "delightful
little fairy." As Mamilius I was really a sweet little thing, but while
I was playing Puck I grew very gawky--not to say ugly! My hair had been
cut short, and my red cheeks stuck out too much. I was a sight!
The parts we play influence our characters to some extent, and Puck made
me a bit of a romp. I grew vain and rather "cocky," and it was just as
well that during the rehearsals for the Christmas pantomime in 1857 I
was tried for the part of the Fairy Dragonetta and rejected. I believe
that my failure was principally due to the fact that Nature had not
given me flashing eyes and raven hair--without which, as everyone knows,
no bad fairy can hold up her head and respect herself. But at the time I
felt distinctly rebuffed, and only the extreme beauty of my dress as the
maudlin "good fairy" Goldenstar consoled me. Milly Smith (afterwards
Mrs. Thorn) was Dragonetta, and one of her speeches ran like this:
"Ungrateful Simple Simon (darting forward) You thought no doubt to
spite me!
That to this Royal Christening you did not invite me!
BUT--(Mrs. Kean: "_You must plaster that 'but' on the white wall
at the back of the gallery._")--
But on this puling brat revenged I'll be!
My fiery dragon there shall have her broiled for tea!"
At Ryde during the previous summer my father had taken the theater, and
Kate and I played in several farces which the Keeleys and the great
comedian Robson had made famous in London. My performances as Waddilove
and Jacob Earwig had provoked some one to describe me as "a perfect
little heap of talent!" To fit my Goldenstar, I must borrow that phrase
and describe myself as a perfect little heap of vanity.
It was that dress! It was a long dress, though I was still a baby, and
it was as pink and gold as it was trailing. I used to think I looked
_beautiful_ in it. I wore a trembling star on my forehead, too, which
was enough to upset any girl!
One of the most wearisome, yet essential details of my education is
connected with my first long dress. It introduces, too, Mr. Oscar Byrn,
the dancing-master and director of crowds at the Princess's. One of his
lessons was in the art of walking with a flannel blanket pinned on in
front and trailing six inches on the floor. My success in carrying out
this maneuver with dignity won high praise from Mr. Byrn. The other
children used to kick at the blanket and progress in jumps like young
kangaroos, but somehow I never had any difficulty in moving gracefully.
No wonder then that I impressed Mr. Byrn, who had a theory that "an
actress was no actress unless she learned to dance early." Whenever he
was not actually putting me through my paces, I was busy watching him
teach the others. There was the minuet, to which he used to attach great
importance, and there was "walking the plank." Up and down one of the
long planks, extending the length of the stage, we had to walk first
slowly and then quicker and quicker until we were able at a
considerable pace to walk the whole length of it without deviating an
inch from the straight line. This exercise, Mr. Byrn used to say, and
quite truly, I think, taught us uprightness of carriage and certainty of
step.
"Eyes right! Chest out! Chin tucked in!" I can hear the dear old man
shouting at us as if it were yesterday; and I have learned to see of
what value all his drilling was, not only to deportment, but to clear
utterance. It would not be a bad thing if there were more "old fops"
like Oscar Byrn in the theaters of to-day. That old-fashioned art of
"deportment" is sadly neglected.
The pantomime in which I was the fairy Goldenstar was very frequently
preceded by "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and the two parts on one night
must have been fairly heavy work for a child, but I delighted in it.
In the same year (1858) I played Karl in "Faust and Marguerite," a jolly
little part with plenty of points in it, but not nearly as good a part
as Puck. Progress on the stage is often crab-like, and little parts, big
parts, and no parts at all must be accepted as "all in the day's work."
In these days I was cast for many a "dumb" part. I walked on in "The
Merchant of Venice" carrying a basket of doves; in "Richard II." I
climbed up a pole in the street scene; in "Henry VIII." I was "top
angel" in the vision, and I remember that the heat of the gas at that
dizzy height made me sick at the dress-rehearsal! I was a little boy
"cheering" in several other productions. In "King Lear" my sister Kate
played Cordelia. She was only fourteen, and the youngest Cordelia on
record. Years after I played it at the Lyceum when I was over forty!
The production of "Henry VIII." at the Princess's was one of Charles
Kean's best efforts. I always refrain from belittling the present at the
expense of the past, but there were efforts here which I have never seen
surpassed, and about this my memory is not at all dim. At this time I
seem to have been always at the side watching the acting. Mrs. Kean's
Katherine of Aragon was splendid, and Charles Kean's Wolsey, his best
part after, perhaps, his Richard II. Still, the lady who used to stand
ready with a tear-bottle to catch his tears as he came off after his
last scene rather overdid her admiration. My mental criticism at the
time was "What rubbish!" When I say in what parts Charles Kean was
"best," I don't mean to be assertive. How should a mere child be able to
decide? I "think back" and remember in what parts I liked him best, but
I may be quite wide of the mark.
In those days audiences liked plenty for their money, and a Shakespeare
play was not nearly long enough to fill the bill. English playgoers in
the early 'fifties did not emulate the Japanese, who go to the theater
early in the morning and stay there until late at night, still less the
Chinese, whose plays begin one week and end the next, but they thought
nothing of sitting in the theater from seven to twelve. In one of the
extra pieces which these hours necessitated, I played a "tiger," one of
those youthful grooms who are now almost a bygone fashion. The pride
that I had taken in my trembling star in the pantomime was almost
equaled now by my pride in my top-boots! They were too small and caused
me insupportable suffering, but I was so afraid that they would be taken
away if I complained, that every evening I used to put up valorously
with the torture. The piece was called "If the Cap Fits," but my boots
were the fit with which I was most concerned!
Years later the author of the little play, Mr. Edmund Yates, the editor
of _The World_--wrote to me about my performance as the tiger:
"When on June 13, 1859 (to no one else in the world would I breathe
the date!) I saw a very young lady play a tiger in a comedietta of
mine called 'If the Cap Fits,' I had no idea that that precocious
child had in her the germ of such an artist as she has since proved
herself. What I think of her performance of Portia she will see in
_The World_."
In "The Merchant of Venice" though I had no speaking part, I was firmly
convinced that the basket of doves which I carried on my shoulder was
the principal attraction of the scene in which it appeared. The other
little boys and girls in the company regarded those doves with eyes of
bitter envy. One little chorus boy, especially, though he professed a
personal devotion of the tenderest kind for me, could never quite get
over those doves, and his romantic sentiments cooled considerably when I
gained my proud position as dove-bearer. Before, he had shared his
sweets with me, but now he transferred both sweets and affections to
some more fortunate little girl. Envy, after all, is the death of love!
Mr. Harley was the Launcelot Gobbo in "The Merchant of Venice"--an old
gentleman, and almost as great a fop as Mr. Byrn. He was always smiling;
his two large rows of teeth were so _very_ good! And he had pompous,
grandiloquent manners, and wore white gaiters and a long hanging
eye-glass. His appearance I should never have forgotten anyhow, but he
is also connected in my mind with my first experience of terror.
It came to me in the greenroom, the window-seat of which was a favorite
haunt of mine. Curled up in the deep recess I had been asleep one
evening, when I was awakened by a strange noise, and, peeping out, saw
Mr. Harley stretched on the sofa in a fit. One side of his face was
working convulsively, and he was gibbering and mowing the air with his
hand. When he saw me, he called out: "Little Nelly! oh, little Nelly!" I
stood transfixed with horror. He was still dressed as Launcelot Gobbo,
and this made it all the more terrible. A doctor was sent for, and Mr.
Harley was looked after, but he never recovered from his seizure and
died a few days afterwards.
Although so much of my early life is vague and indistinct, I can always
see and hear Mr. Harley as I saw and heard him that night, and I can
always recollect the view from the greenroom window. It looked out on a
great square courtyard, in which the spare scenery, that was not in
immediate use, was stacked. For some reason or other this courtyard was
a favorite playground for a large company of rats. I don't know what the
attraction was for them, except that they may have liked nibbling the
paint off the canvas. Out they used to troop in swarms, and I, from my
perch on the window-seat, would watch and wonder. Once a terrible storm
came on, and years after, at the Lyceum, the Brocken Scene in "Faust"
brought back the scene to my mind--the thunder and lightning and the
creatures crawling on every side, the _grayness_ of the whole thing.
All "calls" were made from the greenroom in those days, and its
atmosphere was, I think, better than that of the dressing-room in which
nowadays actors and actresses spend their time during the waits. The
greenroom at the Princess's was often visited by distinguished people,
among them PlanchŽ, the archaeologist, who did so much for Charles
Kean's productions, and Macready. One night, as with my usual
impetuosity I was rushing back to my room to change my dress, I ran
right into the white waistcoat of an old gentleman! Looking up with
alarm, I found that I had nearly knocked over the great Mr. Macready.